Former House Speaker Tom Foley dies at 84

WASHINGTON -- Tall and courtly, Tom Foley served 30 years in the House when partisan confrontation was less rancorous than today and Democrats had dominated for decades. He crowned his long political career by becoming speaker, only to be toppled when Republicans seized control of Congress in 1994, turned out by angry voters with little taste for incumbents.

Foley, the first speaker to be booted from office by his constituents since the Civil War, died yesterday at the age of 84 of complications from a stroke, according to his wife, Heather.

She said he had suffered a stroke last December and was hospitalized in May with pneumonia. He returned home after a week and had been on hospice care there ever since, she said.

"Foley was very much a believer that the perfect should not get in the way of the achievable," Heather Foley wrote in an obituary of her husband. She said he believed that "half of something was better than none."

"There was always another day and another Congress to move forward and get the other half done," she wrote.

"America has lost a legend of the United States Congress," President Barack Obama said in a statement yesterday, adding, "Tom's straightforward approach helped him find common ground with members of both parties."

Foley, who grew up in a politically active family in Spokane, Wash., represented that agriculture-heavy area for 15 terms in the House, including more than five years in the speaker's chair.

As speaker, he was an active negotiator in the 1990 budget talks that led to President George H.W. Bush breaking his pledge to never agree to raise taxes, an episode that played a role in Bush's 1992 defeat. Even so, Bush released a statement Friday lauding Foley.

"Tom never got personal or burned bridges," Bush said. "We didn't agree on every issue, but on key issues we managed to put the good of the country ahead of politics."

Foley was defeated in 1994 by 4,000 votes by Spokane attorney George Nethercutt, a Republican who supported term limits, which the speaker fought. Also hurting Foley was his ability to bring home federal benefits, which Nethercutt used by accusing him of pork-barrel politics.

Foley later served as U.S. ambassador to Japan for four years in the Clinton administration.